opera

Last opera I saw was "Rigaletto" at the Met. It was doubly cool because I'd done stuff with the BSO as a member of the chorus with two of the cast members (Rene Pape and Hei-Kyung Hong).

I wrote Rodgers and Hammerstein when I meant Gilbert and Sullivan. Jesus.

whoa - http://gothamist.com/2007/07/12/opera_tenor_jer.php

holy shit

saw The Nose last night while suffering with a headcold and it was like exquisite torture: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h60UYezR5wfzDkGkwxJDRZ815iMwD9E8VKHO0

Visually mindboggling, musically nearly incomprehensibly complex and varied, utterly lacking anything resembling a plot. Amongst the most spectacularly vivid things I've ever experienced and very painful; not sure if I enjoyed it exactly but it was SOMETHING

I was at the same show and had a somewhat similar reaction to forks.

oi, Shostakovich is a hack who outta be drawn 'n quartered for foisting "Moscow, Cheryomushki" on the world that never asked for it. 'is balls should be in a museum afterwards as a warnin!

So I'm a lifelong opera hater in spite of, or perhaps because of growing up in an opera-loving house. Got free tix to see Traviata at the Met. Listening now to a recording - I can't say I feel strong revulsion or anything but the music seems so uninteresting compared to most classical music that I like. It sounds so simple and limited. Maybe that's just Verdi. Has anyone found themselves changing their mind about opera later in life?

i bet i could if you'd take me more often.

Fun times in LA.

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2010-05/53743831.jpg

Pink Floyd's The Ring

gotta say, this director seems like a cock

somehow i feel like ass-backwards into loving opera

(not tons of it, but like, the magic flute, marriage of figaro, and some other stuff)

the whole genre just kinda come out of nowhere to knock me on my ass over the last year or so.

i mean i knew i would eventually get into it (and more into classical) as i got old and stuff

but it has been a revelation. wonderful.

yall can recommend me some good non-n00b stuff if you like.

right so

anyone

Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle! Scary and moody and overwhelming

Beethoven's Fidelio! Beautiful and touching and it makes you cry. And it's wonderfully corny.

Don't know how you feel about baroque opera, it can take a while to get into, but almost any opera by Handel is worth taking time to enjoy.
I love Ariodante, Guilio Cesare, Rinaldo, Orlando, Acis and Galatea and Partenope.

Continuing with baroque: Rameau's Les Boreades and Les Indes Galantes have great earthy music.
Purcells' Dido and Aeneas is refreshing and punchy.

Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea is to my mind ont of the top 10 operas, it's incredibly dark, and sexy and mischeivous, and all at a time when the villains were not supposed to get away with it.

You cannot pass by Boris Godunov by mussorgsy, this is the great Russian opera. The music is absolutely fabulous.

The only Verdi I've seen are Aida, Falstaff and Macbeth, and they were all wonderful (Macbeth could stand to be longer).

Real operaheads will tell you that Richard Strauss's Elektra, Salome and Der Rosenkavalier are fatastic, and I've only heard snipppets of each, but I'm sure that's right. There's a lot more Strauss to explore if you like them.

I enjoy listening to King Roger by Szymanowski, Berg's Lulu, Dvorak's Rusalka, and Jenufa by Janacek.

Any Rossini is fun. I just saw Die Meistersinger by Wagner, and it was good but, um , could have done with less philosophising imo.

thanks so much

Suggestions I will second because I've seen them:

Fidelio
Dido and Aeneas
Orlando
Falstaff <----- A++++++ suggestion

I also recommend Carmen and Die Zauberfloete (The Magic Flute).

If you want to dip your toes into more modern stuff, Porgy and Bess, Nixon in China and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny cover a lot of musical territory and are all excellent.

i'm pretty obsessed with the magic flute these days... just watched the ingmar bergman version which is great. even used some music from it for this lil vid http://vimeo.com/13425089

last amazing opera i saw = salome

overwhelming

i liked dr. atomic a lot?
and the nose was interesting but I had a headcold and i thought i was gonna die.

I'm going to the opera twice over the next few days (Magic Flute and Madame Butterfly). Never been before, I have no idea what to expect besides rich men in tuxedos and hecklers. And non-stop disco dancing.

Will report back.

dunno where you're located but hipsters opera too these days

Both of those are awesome! The Magic Flute, depending on the production, can be really funny, and the music is just WOW.

The music in Madama Butterfly is just as WOW but... not funny. Not even a little bit.

Will keep an eye out for hipsters - it's in Vienna btw

All you need:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QnhlVqjEL._SS500_.jpg

really want to get into opera...the time is right i know it...

Are you interested in classics, new works, or rarely performed pieces?

i think classics, in my mind i'm imagining sort of dark intense italian stuff, tho this is based on childhood memories of it being on tv.

So like Puccini, Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti?

FYI Verdi operas tend to be like DAMN

There are some great modern stagings of The Magic Flute on DVD. Apart from the music being fantastic the opera lends itself to wacky expressionist stage sets and costumes.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mozart-Zauberflote-Magic-Flute-Royal/dp/B0000BV1JB/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1300973831&sr=1-2

That's my fave.

If you've got Sky Arts or access to it they broadcast modern performances of classics weekly. I know Mozart isn't the dark intense Italian stuff but I feel like Magic Flute or Don Giovanni are better intros to opera in many ways because they are so playful but still intense. If you wanna go straight to the 19th Century masters then my personal fave is Rigoletto which fulfils the dark intensity stuff v. well.

Mozart operas are fantastic, yes.

Actually "The Magic Flute" is a good starter; it's not wall-to-wall singing but when the songs start, every other one is like OMG WAU.

i do have sky arts actually...must sky plus some of these.

Yeah, they show very good productions, spoiled me a bit for when I first went to see one live.

DVDs were made for opera
I like the BBC National Orchestra of Wales' version of "Turn Of The Screw"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t20fvLO_RXo

Assuming that blog post is accurate (a big assumption), this seems like the most OTM comment:

What this incident reveals is that the Met has no policy or protocol in place for dealing with harassment complaints. (Probably should have put “harassment” in quote marks, here) To instantly fire someone with no apparent method of investigation and resolution, is crazy.

Digging this Philip Glass Orphee I am hearing on WKCR’s Saturday Night at the Opera.

Really curious about this production of Adriana Lecouvrer with Anna N. and Piotr B. but doubt I will get over there before it finishes.

The first act of Akhnaten at the ENO was one of the best things I have seen in a while. The remaining two thirds contains altogether too much juggling but is still pretty good.

Good value tickets (£20) too.

hot take opera is good

Starting to stream this recording of Rigoletto I just found with my old favorite Dmitri H and new krush Nadine S.

Piotr B loves to post smiling pictures of himself and others on social media.

for opera i mostly listen to the super old acoustic recordings, probably because they're short and i don't have the stamina for a whole opera

huh that's a coincidence, I saw my first opera ever last night and now I see ILM's talking about it

I saw Puccini's La Boheme with my girlfriend for Valentine's Day, it was excellent!

I’ve been working my way through the Theodore Curentzis opera recordings since seeing his Beethoven’s 5th last year (really, really good). Really refreshing interpretations. He hasn’t recorded the magic flute yet which is the one I really want to hear.

Piotr finishing up run of Tosca at Wiener Staatsoper and has been posting lots of pictures of him and Sondra R.

Hi all, so I've been listening to classical/lieder/opera a lot the past few years. Right now I'm on the biggest Verdi trip, collecting good cd versions of all of them. It's incredible how he's like always super good, even in the early years when he was just cranking operas out left and right. Astounding even. Outrageous even. It's the most exciting thing I've ever encountered in music. I mean I'm big on operas by Puccini and Mussorgsky and Monteverdi and Mozart too, but Verdi's achievement just overshadows those masters! Anyway.

Only a Factory URL -- did that Rigoletto actually sound good and is it available on cd? I wasted money on Giulini, whose acclaimed version is for shit -- unbalanced instruments/singers/chorus + the stereo is all on one side -- ditto Muti who I just hate in general. Rigoletto is I think the only major Verdi where an acceptable/listenable version continues to elude me. I understand this particular opera has a lot of secondary off stage/distant orchestra stuff, so it's always going to sound a little weird, but the versions I've heard are excessively/needlessly weird. Or so it seems?

I don't do spotify or anything like that, and some cheaper MP3 download versions I've bought were useless because digital watermarking ruins choruses and it drives me absolutely insane with rage... and I'm the only person in the world who seems to care about or even notice that kind of thing. I basically blind purchase things I can't find at the local library to test drive. So I'd appreciate any help at all here! As far as it goes, I really like 50's-70's recordings where everything is equal, instruments and voices interchangeable and supporting each other and carrying each other along on the tidal wave, recordings where it seems like there's just 2 mics for the entire room with the singers more or less in the middle? So it sounds like how the composer wrote it? Toscanini, Mehta, and the old Phillips series of cd releases by Gardelli are the kind of sound I like for Verdi, where the instruments are actually in proportion to the singers/choruses. And where it's energetic and forthright, as clearly it should be. Even in slow/somber parts I feel like Verdi should always be electric with energy.

Also am I alone in not giving a shit about the singers or the stories? Like actually watching opera is not even on my radar. For me it's just the most fantastic and ambitious music of all and functions quite well as such, especially Verdi where even the plot stuff is highly controlled and always super musical! I myself absolutely do have the stamina for long operas, and in fact I listen to music like most people watch TV, with my full attention and totally enraptured. I would recommend total darkness/immersion to intrepid listeners who struggle with opera (I used to!)

Reading reviews about opera is problematic for me because all people seem to talk about are the singers and stories; ditto the reference books I own! The singers all sound the same to me except for phrasing, it seems to my perhaps uncultured ears that once the human voice is projected at a loud volume all the nuance and timbral coloring/shading (like what you find in pop music) goes right out the window to my ears so I really don't understand the whole obsession with the singers? The reviews are always like 'oh yeah, and there's some good tunes because after all it's Verdi' and that's all they ever say about the actual music. Though it's true he's so extraordinarily good what is there really to say? Ha! The no duh aspect to Verdi is very strange to me, nonetheless. In fact this whole strange thread is cryptic like that, almost like reading another language to this neophyte!

I no longer know where I'm going with all this, but those are my thoughts this morning! Basta!

Re watermarking - I am the other person who cares and notices. It is a crime, especially, as you say, in music with choruses.

Totally with you on singers and the frustration of opera reviews/voice mavens. I am here for narratively fueled music for orchestra and voices. IDGAF about whether Freni is ‘scooping’ or w/e

Also yes Verdi rules

Only a Factory URL -- did that Rigoletto actually sound good and is it available on cd?

You can read a review of the CD here. Please filter it through the appropriate lens.
https://operawire.com/rigoletto-cd-review-dmitri-hvorostovsky-delivers-immersive-performance-in-otherwise-disappointing-package/

I thought by "disappointing package" the reviewer would be referring to the somewhat cheesy cover design.

Another opinion: https://www.operanews.com/Opera_News_Magazine/2017/12/Recordings/VERDI__Rigoletto.html

Great, thanks a lot, it's appreciate!

Appreciated!

Pleased to report for the benefit of any future viewers of this thread who also might perhaps be aggravated by the Rigoletto version problem -- the thorn in my now almost complete Verdi collection's side for the past two months -- that I just got the 1964 Kubelik (w/Fischer-Dieskau in the title role) version on DG and it's acceptable! The voices still sometimes sound disproportionate to the instruments to a distressing degree, but the singers are much better balanced and the musicality of their sung melodies carry the tunes in those instances far better than the other versions I've spent time with. It's also an energetic and enthusiastic version. I hesitated to get this one because I have the same team doing Pelleas et Melisande circa 1971 and that version isn't particularly convincing (though it's not uninteresting because it is bone dry and the instruments sound really stark as opposed to the lush treatment Debussy usually gets) but their Rigoletto is totally worth 13$ or whatever relative pittance you can find it for used. It is similarly stark, crisp, and window-clear, but that works better I think for Verdi!

I also think it's worth reiterating that the early Verdi operas including but not limited to Stiffellio, Il Corsaro, I Lombardi, Ernani, I Masnedieri, Alzira, Attilla, Un Giorno di Regno, Giovanna d'Arco, Macbeth, Nabucco, Luisa Miller, and Le Battaglia de Legnano make for uniformly incredible music-listening and represent an absolutely outrageous unbroken run of masterpieces -- and this before he even gets to his canonical "mature" works!

Finally, I do think I understand now better why opera reviews always deal with the actors and have a "no duh" factor when it comes to the actual music -- it's like reviewing Shakespeare performances I guess? That kind of thing totally makes sense when it comes to the Bard or Euripides or something. It's unfortunate all the same though. I feel like so many more people would be huge on Verdi (or Monteverdi, or whomever) if it weren't for all that theatrical baggage; with all that baggage he and other opera composers get relegated to this exotic and eccentric extramusical ghetto of sorts. I guess I just wish I myself had known/realized the very real musical virtue of it a long time ago! I wish I had known it was safe and even profitable to ignore the visual/story side, that the translated lyrics and all that aren't in fact vital to the music's success! The more I listen the more I feel like while the story and theatrical aspects are a great reason/pretext for operas to exist at all, in the long run they just get in the way!

There's a Kubelik Pelleas et Melisande? Is it a live audience recording?

Yes to both, and no audience chatter/clapping; it's on the Orfeo label. It's probably worth checking out! Sounds pretty different from the other versions I have, and I believe it's sung in French too.

I like the idea of a super dry unblended pelleas recording

Right! It's pretty novel, you can like distinguish the cellos from the violins and hear the bowing texture, the timpani become prominent, and so on, ha! I listened to it again last night and had a lot of fun.

That one part where a chorus appears (and vanishes a few bars later if I remember rightly!) is even stranger!

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/apr/07/white-porgy-and-bess-cast-forced-to-say-they-identify-as-african-american

The fact that the debate is framed in explicitly fascist terms is hardly surprising in the land of Viktor Orban, but this is actually a fair point in Eastern Europe:

The opera house’s contention is that in a country such as Hungary, the all-black cast rule essentially makes the work impossible to perform.

Saw Davóne Tines _The Black Clown_ last night and it was absolute dynamite, one of the best things I've seen in a very good year. really hope it gets picked up for a longer run in a more appropriate theater.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/arts/music/langston-hughes-black-clown-mostly-mozart-lincoln-center.html

The first act of Akhnaten at the ENO was one of the best things I have seen in a while. The remaining two thirds contains altogether too much juggling but is still pretty good.

Good value tickets (£20) too.

― ShariVari, Monday, February 11, 2019 6:33 PM (eight months ago)

This is in NYC at the Met now, contemplating checking it out

saw it last night and enjoyed it but not as much as Satygraha at the Met a few years ago. main problem i think was my seats were too far away so the orchestra never got loud/ immersive enough. can confirm there is a lot of juggling, which i liked.

3 hrs of juggling though, I dunno... You were on one of the upper levels?

yeah pretty near the very top

it’s called the family circle for some reason.

Suggestions please, for a project: symphonic opera bangers with choir, rather than solo voices. Pieces that would be sample-friendly, in the manner of say these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_a2pfwKjIY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AasJhhjpK4
(famously sampled by Big Boi of course)

I don't mean to dodge the question, I just came here to say Leontyne Price (^^^) is 95 years old today. Happy Birthday!!

Happy Birthday!

Question is so broad, hard to pick one.

Random thing that pops in my head is something from Eugene Onegin. Maybe this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6jhnNk3U9U
perhaps starting from the 2:40 mark? Maybe not banging enough for you.

Borodin - Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor
The banger starts at about 3:50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqKclPhsK0o

Wagner - Sailors' Chorus from Der Fliegende Hollander
Chorus enters at about the minute mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60Ae1aUXANY

Verdi - Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore
Literal banging at 1:15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZN01_pAxro

Ha! This last was the most obvious choice

can somebody help me with a curious opera-related discrepancy? lately i've been listening to this rossini recording:

https://www.discogs.com/release/2836006-Rossini-Erich-LeinsdorfMetropolitan-Opera-And-Chorus-The-Barber-Of-Seville

and i was hoping to read the (italian) libretto along with what i was hearing. unfortunately i've misplaced the libretto that originally came with this box set. so i turned to the internet. the specific portion i wanted to track down is the last side of the last disc in the box: it's labeled "Act III (concl.)" so that's what i look for. well, it turns out that everywhere else on the internet specifies that "the barber of seville" is an opera in TWO acts!

does anybody know what's going on here?

There's another opera with the same title by Giovanni Paisiello, apparently?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barber_of_Seville_(Paisiello)

In popular culture
The Count's serenade "Saper bramate" is used in Stanley Kubrick's period film Barry Lyndon.[citation needed]

Just got out of much ballyhooed production of AKHNATEN at The Met. Philip Glass came out and took a bow.

Not a repetitive series of bows lasting 58 minutes?

Ha, no. Just one or two.

https://playbill.com/article/countertenor-anthony-roth-costanzo-on-the-transformative-nature-of-philip-glass-akhnaten

Interview with Nerfertiti, Rihab Chaieb:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsFc4PTLY7s

Dima highlight reel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgetLghpOCc

A Renée/Dmitri duet just showed up in my Friday algorithm. Still missing that guy.